


with one hand I rocked you and with one heart I reached for you

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: (somewhat), Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Past Abuse, Past Torture, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Sibling Bonding, Spoilers for Book 5 - A Dance with Dragons, in which these two idiots might be trying to reconnect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 16:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5504357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>where Asha goes looking for her brother in two different but somewhat similar instances, years apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with one hand I rocked you and with one heart I reached for you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theoldgods (missandei)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=theoldgods+%28missandei%29).



> This was written for the last round of got-exchange - my prompt was _Asha and Theon as children: what were they like? What shenanigans did they get up to? Did they even interact that much?_ , which I ended up doubling because what's more interesting than flashback/present times parallels? *hides* also because I had been wanting to write Theon/Asha centric stuff inspired by the song I stole the title from for months and everything fit, so.
> 
> Goes unsaid that nothing is mine, I only own the speculation and the title is from Patti Smith (if you wanna listen to _Kimberly_ while reading it might make you see the reasons of fifty per cent of my choices here) and I can only hope they get things as good as here when WoW comes out..

“What do you mean, _he left_?”

The Night’s Watch recruit in front of her just stares helplessly and Asha tries to look as nonthreatening as possible – the lad looks barely three and ten, shows how desperate the situation has become, and he’s just the messenger of bad news.

“Sorry. M’lady. He just – he walked through the kitchens this morning, someone asked him where he was going, he didn’t answer and he just – left. I swear I have no clue of where your brother is.”

“It’s all right,” she sighs, “it’s not your fault. Just – go back to your post and if someone sees him go find me.”

“Of course. M’lady.”

He runs off and Asha shakes her head in frustration, then heads straight for the room where Jeyne is staying with some of the wildling women and Stannis’s daughter – if anyone knows where in the seven hells did her brother decide to go _one hour before dark_ it’s probably going to be her. Considering that Theon sleeps on the floor there more often than not.

Jeyne is, thankfully, there. When she sees Asha behind the door, she tells the girl she’ll finish braiding her hair in a minute and comes right over. She definitely looks better now than she did when she and Theon were quite literally dumped at her feet back in Stannis’s camp – if it wasn’t for the frostbite on her nose she’d have a lot more men glancing her way, out of all the recruits at the Wall who still think about such matters.

“This is about Theon, isn’t it?” She asks, keeping her voice low.

“One of the guards said he stalked off somewhere. It’s going to be dark in a short while, and we all know what tends to happen after sunset these days.”

Jeyne visibly shudders. “Well, he had – a fairly rough night.” She swallows, glances back inside the room, then comes closer and her voice drops to a whisper. “Do you know when – when he starts saying that the trees at Winterfell knew his name?”

Asha tries to repress the shiver rising up along her spine – she’s not easily spooked but when Theon starts trying to convince her of that specific instance it never fails to leave her unsettled at least.

“I do.”

“It was one of _those_ nights.”

“Wait.” She might just have a clue of what he might be doing. “Is there a godswood around here?”

“I think so? Men who worship the Old Gods would need a heart tree to say their vows.”

“And we haven’t been anywhere with one since we left Winterfell,” Asha concludes. Damn. The idiot probably went to the fucking godswood to try and talk to some tree, _again_ , the way he would sometimes back in Winterfell and – most of the time he’s actually a lot better off than she’d have imagine after seeing the state he was in when he was returned to her, but in this specific instance it’s just impossible to reason with him. “Thank you,” she tells Jeyne, “I’ll try to go and find him.”

“Be quick,” Jeyne says, and then she goes back inside and closes the door. Everyone in that room is dressed in ill-fitting black clothes. At least Asha’s aren’t ill-fitting, even if Theon’s are.

Damn. Lately there have been barely four, five hours of sunlight each day and they maybe have one left – Asha doesn’t want to know what’s going to happen when they will have one, or none.

If anyone had told her, ten years ago, that she’d have ended up freezing to death on the bloody Wall during the _Long Night_ , she’d have thought them mad. If they added that she’d be taking orders by a former northern bastard who turned out to be _Azor Ahai_ she’d have thought them even madder.

If they had also added that at the same time she’d have been trying to make sure her brother didn’t involuntarily commit suicide in the meantime – she doesn’t know what she’d have thought, but now, as she asks where is the bloody godswood and how long it takes to get there, she’s thinking about something that happened once on Pyke, a few years before the rebellion.

Gods, to think that back _then_ she had thought it a bad conundrum.

\--

_“Where did you say you left him?”_

_Maron gives her a half-shrug and Asha is somewhat tempted to be a lot less nice when she asks him that question for the third time, but hopefully one of them is going to answer it already._

_“Calm down,” Rodrik answers instead, “you heard him right before.”_

_Asha breathes in deeply and wonders if it’s just her brothers being this dull at the ripe ages of fourteen and twelve or if it’s just men in general. She hopes it’s not the latter._

_“You left him at the beach near the gatehouse. On his own.”_

_Rodrik shrugs again. “Yes. So?”_

_“So, I don’t know, how old do you both think your_ brother _is?”_

_Maron stares back at her and gives her another shrug. “Hey, he did the same to you when you were six and you showed up before sunset and kicked him in the shin.”_

_“Theon’s_ not _me,” Asha sighs, “and he never goes to the gatehouse, he probably doesn’t even remember the way back!”_

_“Oh, don’t be such a woman about this,” Rodrik shrugs, “he’ll come back soon enough. If not, he’ll have toughened up a bit.”_

_They really don’t get it, do they, and she figures they won’t be the ones telling their mother that they thought it would be a fun idea to leave their little brother to figure out how to come back from that beach climbing rocks. On a rainy day. When he can barely climb trees._

_“I’ll just go find him,” Asha sighs, “if Mother asks, just tell her he’s with me.”_

_“Aren’t you both coddling him a bit too much?” Maron quips._

_“Didn’t you think of what might happen if he falls ill or trips while trying to climb up on those rocks to get back to the main road? Then I would like to see you explaining it,” she huffs, and then stalks out of the room before she can argue with them about it any further. She heard Rodrik laughing in the distance – well, she just hopes Mother doesn’t find out before Asha is back, and especially that she doesn’t notice that at least Rodrik was half drunk._

_At times she wishes her little brother was a bit less shy and stood up to them a bit more. At other times, she wishes that Rodrik and Maron would just leave Theon to his own business – everyone would be happier for that, she thinks. Anyway, it’s no matter now – she has to find him and bring him back before anyone finds out in the first place. Good thing she knows that beach fairly well – she’s been sneaking out there with Tris for years._

_But, Asha reasons as she heads to the gatehouse, they usually went with good weather. You have to climb down some rocks to get to the sand, and even then it’s half sandy and half full of other rocks and stones, and the water can get cold. Considering that the day is fairly grey and she can see a storm coming in the distance, that beach isn’t anywhere she’d like to be._

_And, she figures, anywhere her five year-old little brother who, last she knew, can’t climb rocks and only got there because either Rodrik or Maron brought him, would like to be._

\--

One of Snow’s friends – she thinks they’re friends anyway, since he’s one of the five people that aren’t commanders or somehow in charge that are freely allowed in the Lord Commander’s tower – gives her directions for the godswood. The good news are that it’s not too far and it’s not too huge, the bad news is that they haven’t seen the sun properly since dawn and now it looks like it might start raining sooner rather than later.

If it starts raining before I get there, we’re going to be drenched by the time we come back. And while it’s not a problem for me, I doubt he can afford it. Not when he’s still underfed, feels pain while walking at any given moment and when he still looks – maybe not _thrice_ her age, not anymore, but no one who saw them standing next to each other would even assume they’re related.

There are times when she wishes she had been the one swinging the sword when Ramsay Snow lost his head. Then she thinks, _and what if we had all been less hostile to him when he came home_ – it’s not the first time she’s pondered that specific notion.

She sighs and speeds up her pace – there’s nothing to gain thinking back about what she could have done better and all to gain in getting to the damned wood faster. She really hopes that Theon found whatever it is that he was looking for, even if she doubts it, especially if it’s trees that might speak his name.

Obviously it’s cold and there’s snow everywhere, good thing the path is still serviceable. She tightens her furs around her shoulders, grabs the obsidian dagger she has on her just in case and gets into a walk just short of running the moment she sees heart trees in the distance. Good. At least _getting_ there and back to Castle Black will be fairly easier than it had been to climb down on that blasted beach years ago, and why is she even thinking about it?

(She doesn’t want to admit to herself that deep down it might be because it was one of the few good memories she might have had of her brother before their father started a rebellion and Rodrik and Maron died and Theon was put on a ship to Winterfell, and it says everything that she doesn’t have any better ones.)

She breathes in the freezing northern air and walks straight into the forest – gods, she really hopes he’s here, because if he isn’t then she’ll have to assume the worst, never mind that she wouldn’t know where to look.

And – thing is, she doesn’t know if their mother will survive this war. She doesn’t know if they will. She doesn’t know if _Westeros_ will. But should it, and should they, she had been hoping that one day she might just – bring Theon back to Pyke and give her back some peace before she passes away, and maybe it’d also bring him some. And knowing that she couldn’t because he just walked out of Castle Black one day before coming back –

She doesn’t want to say that it would be failing him worse than she ever has and that she doesn’t want to contemplate that notion, either.

Asha had also hoped that they might somehow find common ground again after all, but she can’t do that if he’s dead, gone or most probably a wight now, can she?

\--

_No one asks why she’s heading out of the castle when a storm is coming closer – good. She walks out of the gates, then takes the path to the only part of that beach that’s not completely covered in rocks. When she gets there she can’t see a thing because the ones she’s supposed to climb to get down are huge enough that she can’t have a decent view of the shore, but that’s the least of her problems. She’s climbed them for years, the fact that they’re somewhat wet because of the damp air won’t be what stops her._

_She turns her back to the sea and starts making her way down slowly – at least she’s fairy sure that Theon can’t have tried to go back to the main path on his own. They’re slippery and sharp and he’s terrible at climbing_ trees _, she’d be surprised if he even tried to go back up on his own. Which is a good thing, actually, regardless of what Rodrik and Maron might think – if he had tried and fell down or cut himself or something of the kind she definitely wouldn’t want to be the person to tell their mother._

_Even if she’s fairly tempted to tell her about this entire mess anyway even if this ends without anyone getting hurt, if anything because she had better plans for her afternoon, and none of them included getting drenched while covering for her brothers. She really should tell on them if only to show them that they can’t expect their stupid japes to have no consequences every time, but it’s also true that they probably wouldn’t even get a reprimand from Father, which would make telling on them useless in the first place, wouldn’t it?_

_She decides it’s better if she concentrates on getting down without possibly spraining an ankle. It takes her a bit of time, but when finally she drops on the ground she hasn’t even cut her palms. Good. She wipes her hands on her trousers, getting rid of the dirt that stuck to her palms, and takes a good look at the shore – at first glance it’s just stones and sand and gray sea, but she can only see part of it. She walks towards the sea and one fairly violent wave catches her feet – it’s cold. Really cold. And while she doesn’t really spend much time with Theon in the first place, she has spent enough to knows he gets cold fairly easily – this keeps on looking worse the more time passes._

_She walks towards the opposite side of the beach._

_“Theon!” She calls out. “Are you here?”_

_For a moment she doesn’t hear anything, and she feels dread rise up in her at the prospect that maybe he really isn’t here anymore, and where should she look for him then –_

_“Asha?”_

_She can barely hear it, thought that might be the strong wind, but it definitely came from further down the shore._

_She breathes out in relief and breaks into a sprint across the stones._

\--

If there’s one thing that unsettles her more than Theon’s stories about trees talking, is walking in between the goddamn things. Those trees look like they have blood in their barks and leaves and she doesn’t really like any of the implications, especially these days. Not that she can claim much moral upper ground, not when the Drowned God’s practices are hardly that much better, never mind that other red god that Stannis worships – still, it doesn’t change that her gut reaction is wishing she didn’t have to look for the damn things in the first place. Also because while she hasn’t seen heart trees yet she isn’t feeling like staying too long in a place that the recruits at the Wall have dubbed _haunted forest_.

She can’t get the hell out of here before she makes sure of where her brother ended up, though.

“Theon!”

No one answers. _Even better, isn’t it?_.

“Theon, are you here?” She tries again after walking a bit further into the trees, and tries to remember what Snow’s friend had told her about the weirwood where the recruits go to swear their vows – he said that it was a small part of the forest itself, just north of Castle Black, so she shouldn’t have to go that much further. And it’s probably not a good idea to call someone out loud lest someone who isn’t Theon hears her.

She goes ahead, hoping that she’s on the right path, and when she sees a white bark in the distance she lets out a relieved breath – the more time she spends here the worse she feels, never mind that the forest is so thick it almost looks as if it’s night already.

Hells, if they don’t meet any wight on the way out she might start actually thinking that _some_ gods exist and are looking out for them indeed.

She walks faster until she gets to the clearing and she almost wants to weep in relief when she sees someone kneeling in front of the biggest of the heart trees, knees planted down in the snow and maimed hands grabbing at the bark – hopefully he hasn’t cut his palms, as if he needs that on top of – on top of everything else.

She moves closer – he’s murmuring something under his breath and for her peace of mind she tries not to pay attention to what it is lest she punches in the face the first person who crosses her way when they go back to Castle Black.

“Theon, it’s almost sunset,” she interrupts as she puts a hand on his shoulder, shaking it strongly enough that he stops doing whatever he was doing and turns to look at her, “maybe it’s not a good time for this?” She tries to sound more like she’s amused than like she’s scared shitless, because if now he starts assuming that she’s angry at him things will turn out fairly sour, but he just shakes his head and looks up at the sky and then at her again – gods, since they met each other in Stannis’s camp everyone has told her that the only thing that might show they’re actually related is that they have the same eyes, and that’s probably true, but – 

She had thought he needed someone to kick him down a notch or two back in Pyke, but she remembers how his eyes seemed to smile along with his mouth when he talked about all the glorious things he would have accomplished while they journeyed to Pyke, and now he’s looking at her in such a… _lost_ way that she isn’t sure she can take it.

Just as he had done years ago when –

No time to think about that.

“I hadn’t – I thought it wasn’t so late,” he says feebly.

“Well, it is, so next time you can ask me to come with you if you have to go outside of the Wall, and now we really should go back. It’s not a good time.”

He gives her a faint nod and she helps him up – he falters when he tries it first, but she grabs his arm and makes sure he doesn’t fall down on his knees. When he’s steady enough, she steers him back on the path leading outside and thinks, _now we just have to walk out of here without meeting the bloody Others along the way_. If only they can manage before the sun has set completely. Her stomach feels completely clenched, she only has one obsidian dagger on her, she hates everything about this situation including how helpless she feels about the fact that Theon didn’t even think of asking her to come with, and she doesn’t want to be on the outside for a moment longer than she has to.

\--

How far did they even leave him, _she thinks as she runs ahead – she’s covered a fair amount of ground and she still hasn’t seeing where Theon is, but he did call out again so he definitely has to be somewhere close. She also really hopes Rodrik was really drunk when he had this grand idea or he’d have even less excuses for it._

_She stops as she reaches the end of the beach, there’s just another rock not far from her now, and that’s when she hears someone crying – oh,_ no _, not that, too. She never quite knew what to do with people crying in front of her, never mind her little brother, but at least he’s making noise – she turns on her left, that’s the direction it came from, and finally she sees Theon. He’s sitting in between another couple rocks, which have a small space in between them where someone could at least kneel as comfortably as it gets. Not counting that he’s still crying and that at some point he must have tripped because his trousers are ripped at the knee and he’s bleeding all over the shore, it seems like he’s fine – good, ripped trousers aren’t a broken leg._

_“There you are,” she sighs, heading over. His head jerks back upwards and the moment he looks at her Asha just stops for a moment because his face is covered in tears and he looks absolutely and completely relieved at seeing her there. Which – she doesn’t think if it has ever happened, not that there ever was an occasion for it to happen, and for that moment she can’t help thinking that you really must either be drunk or downright mean to leave here someone looking at you like this for a jape._

_Then he stands up, wincing most probably because of his knee – she moves closer and helps him stepping over the rocks. The moment he’s outside them, he stares up at her again as if he’s pondering whether he should do something or not, then he bites down on his lower lip and throws his arms at her knees and starts crying again – gods, of course, wasn’t this the reason she started being scarce in Mother’s chambers when he turned two or three, because she had no idea of what to do whenever he did this kind of thing?_

_Never mind that obviously whatever Rodrik and Maron thought this stint would accomplish, it didn’t work._

_“Come on,” she says, “it’s fine, we’re going back now.”_

_She leans down, seeing if she can get him to – to just stop clinging at her legs, and then she touches the back of his shoulders._

_She almost recoils at how cold he feels. No one who’s been outside for an hour or two at most would be shivering this much, not unless –_

_“When did they bring you down here?” She asks, hoping that he doesn’t answer –_

_“Early this morning,” Theon sobs against her leg._

And they told me they had brought him down and then come back to the castle at once, _Asha thinks and doesn’t say, because if she did she’d sound fairly angry – she’s definitely going to have a talk with both of them again when they’re at the castle._

_“That’s – all right, we really have to go back. Just – wait.” She kneels down, holding out her arms with a sigh – she rubs his back as he pretty much throws his arms around her neck. He really is freezing, which isn’t good at all if they need to climb back up. She definitely can’t do it with him clinging to her like that, but she can’t even drag him along if he’s shuddering throughout – he’d fall. He feels heavier than he probably is, and his heart is beating frantically, she can feel it, and she doubts it's just because of the cold._

_She keeps on rubbing his back, feeling fairly helpless as he cries his eyes out against her shoulder, and then she hears thunder in the distance._

__Oh, no. _She looks back at the sea and not only the water looks dark grey now, but the entire sky is that same color – even better, now it’s going to start raining soon and climbing back up will be impossible._

_Still, she thinks that there was some kind of cave on the other side of the beach – or at least, part of the small cliff facing the beach has been eroded enough that there’s space for two people to sit beneath it without getting wet and without having to be in the way of the waves. It’s going to have to do for now. She starts walking as fast as she can – hopefully she can get under that rock before it starts raining for real – and she has a fleeting memory of their mother putting him into her arms when he was barely months old a long time ago, and she spent all that time worrying she’d make him fall and break him or something equally stupid._

_At least he’s getting somewhat warmer now._

\--

The good thing is that when they walk out of the forest there’s still some light.

The bad thing is that she’s not so sure Theon can walk all the way to Castle Black – he’s been stumbling his way along the path and just because she was holding him up, and now that they’re out in the open it’s obvious that his feet must be hurting more than usual. Well, they _would_ , when he walked all the way there first and when he’s not going to grow new toes overnight.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly as he obviously forces himself to follow her.

“What for?”

“I shouldn’t – I shouldn’t have gone,” he keeps on, not looking at her.

“Next time just warn,” she sighs, speeding up her pace – she knows she shouldn’t, but the longer they’re outside the higher the risk they find wights going their way increases.

Never mind that there might be some light still, but the sky is covered in dark grey clouds and the last thing he needs is getting drenched, not when he’s so in need of gaining weight that sometimes she’s surprised when hard gusts of wind don’t just make him fall down whenever it blows.

The moment she thinks that, the grip on her arm falters and he crashes to the ground without much dignity – he bites down a scream, probably, and he keeps his eyes screwed shut, his hands grasping at the cloak that’s most probably not keeping him any warmer.

_Too bad we’re not on that beach and you aren’t half the size I used to be_ , she thinks for a moment, but then –

Well, why not.

She shakes her head, grasps his shoulder and crouches down on the ground. “Get on my back,” she says.

“Wait – sorry?"

“Put your arms around my neck, you can’t stand this pace and we can’t afford to slow down.”

“But – wouldn’t it – wouldn’t I do that anyway?"

“No, I don't think so.” She doubts he weights that much.

He complies a moment later, good thing that. She can't help feeling sick at how - how little he seems to weigh now in comparison to that time on the beach years ago. At least, back then he had felt a lot heavier than he is now, even if his heart is beating as frantically as it had back in the day and she's feeling exactly as inadequate to handle the situation.

She walks on. Castle Black isn't that far.

For a moment his hold around her shoulders goes tighter and she can't help looking down at his maimed hands hanging just over her chest.

Asha doesn't know if _this_ is how it feels when someone squeezes your heart in a fist and you are very much alive to feel it, but she might bet on it if she knew anyone willing to take her up on it. If she thinks about how different the situation was back then... she doesn't even know how to put it into words but what she's sure of is that she feels angry, very angry, and she'd like to know at whom she should target it. Pity that no easy answer is forthcoming.

\--

_They reach the cave just before rain starts pouring, good thing that, and as she sits down on the dry stones he moves off her, even if he looks reluctant to. Still, she can see just by looking at him that it's because he knows that about anyone in the castle would have been laughing at such clinginess, had they seen the two of them since she found him. He also is staring at the beach while his shoulders still shake for the cold, never mind that he's finding sitting on cobbles obviously uncomfortable - he's squirming every other moment. He also still has tear tracks on his face. Asha feels like she’s the wrong person to be here. He shudders at the first flash of light they see in the distance, followed by thunderclap that has him almost jerking on his feet._

_That's when she notices that he's grabbing at something in the pocket of his shirt._

_“What do you have there?” She asks, hoping to distract him somewhat._

_He shrugs. “Nothing.”_

_“It looks like something to me,” she shrugs. “I won't tell anyone, if that's what you're worried about.”_

_He stares at her for a moment, before he wipes at his face with one of his hands and takes something wrapped in a small handkerchief out of said pocket._

_“Mother always says she liked to go to the beach and search for shells,” he says apologetically, opening it up. “I thought I'd get some for her since she doesn't go out all that often. But I didn't know the way and I asked them to show me.”_

_And in fact there are some five or six seashells inside the small piece of cloth - two are mostly white, the others are grey, one is some kind of weird color that could look black in the right lightening. Hells, Asha realizes, house Harlaw's colors. She doesn't know how to describe it even, and she's never going to say the word_ adorable _aloud, but it kind of is, and somehow she can entirely imagine their brothers leaving the kid there or planning to when they found out why he wanted to go to the damned beach._

_"Let me guess, you told them why you wanted to come down here, didn't you."_

_"Yes." He says nothing else, staring at the rip on his trousers. It's still bleeding out a bit - she huffs, carefully takes the piece of cloth he had used to hold in the shells off the ground and starts cleaning the wound. He hisses in pain but that's it - when there's no blood left to clean anymore she wraps it around his knee without too many ceremonies. Then she carefully piles up the shells and hands them back to him._

_"Hold these until we get back, will you," she says, and he does, and gods but the way he's still looking at her as he shivers from the cold is just - there are reasons why she never knows what to do with people on whom she has more than a couple of years. Then again, he's obviously cold and no one is here to look at them, right?_

_She huffs and just grabs him around the waist until he's fully in her lap, and she breathes out when he puts his free arm around her neck again. He's breathing slower now, and as her hand finds her way into his wet, tangled hair while the storm rages outside she decides that maybe she could be doing a lot worse._

\--

She doesn't let him down until they're close to the gate, and just to spare him embarrassment - not that he doesn't lean heavily on her all the way inside Castle Black. Thankfully no one has comments to spare when they walk back inside, and good thing they arrived just now because the moment she walks on the inside of the fort it starts raining again.

She should bring him back to Jeyne's room, but she knows he'll just sleep on the ground and so she doesn't ask for his opinion as she heads to her own room, dragging him along.

He doesn't take notice of it until they're fully inside.

“This isn't – I mean, this is your room, isn’t –”

“It is, ” she cuts him. “Excuse me if I think that you don't look fit for sleeping on the ground.”

He shrugs, not denying that he would in fact do just that if left to his own devices.

She’s itching to ask him why he would even, but she’s not sure she wants to touch that particular topic, and not just because the less reasons he has to think about Ramsay Bolton the better. It’s also because the least _she_ thinks about him the better.

“You know,” she sighs as she drops her furs on the bed, “I meant it when I said that if you have to go to that godswood you can say it and ask me to come with instead of leaving on your own.”

He gives her a minute shrug. “But you don’t like it,” he answers.

“I don’t understand it,” Asha admits. “But I’d rather come along just to make sure you don’t come back looking like a wight.”

She’s sure that he mutters something like _I doubt even wights would have me anyway_ , but she doesn’t ask him to repeat it – if it was what he said, she doesn’t really need to hear it again.

“What’s with those trees, anyway? I don’t remember you ever caring much about gods either way.”

Theon doesn’t answer her in the beginning, and when enough time has passed she figures he just doesn’t want to, but then –

She hasn’t stood up from the bed after sitting down on the mattress, and he was standing next to the only window in the tiny room – now he’s walking slowly towards her. He drops sitting down on the ground with a grimace, obviously it’s somewhat painful for him to walk, and then he sits up with his back against the mattress. He’s this close to her leg, even if they’re not touching, and he’s not looking at her when he answers.

“That’s because I didn’t. Care much,” he says. He sounds like he has talked himself hoarse under those trees and now he barely has any voice left. “But you can’t ever know how desperate you might get.”

He stops and she doesn’t press on.

“There was a moment – when it seemed like Stannis was about to storm in. I went to that godswood. It wasn’t – I thought I was about to die either way and – I just went there and started praying. Not that it was this huge request, but still.”

“And what was that?”

He shrugs. “That if I had to die, I wanted to do it as myself, not – not who _he_ wanted me to be.”

Asha doesn’t know the entire story and she’s not sure she ever will, but she knows enough to understand that particular request. Her throat feels very, very dry as she reaches down and puts a hand on his shoulder, taking care of not pushing too much. He still doesn’t look up at her.

“I know it sounds mad,” he adds then, quietly. “But then – I heard them.”

“The trees?”

“Yes,” he breathes out. “They – they were – they said my name. I know I heard it.”

“And so you – want to hear that again?” _Is that why you risk your life to go there?_ , is what she’s really thinking and doesn’t ask.

He shrugs minutely. “There are – many things said in the North about heart trees. And the Old Gods. Who knows what’s true and what’s not. Some people said the dead can talk through them, even if I don’t think it was something everyone agreed on. They also said those trees are dead gods in the first place and that no one can lie in front of one. That one’s not true. I know it isn’t. But – I don’t know. I just know I heard my name. _My_ name. And that just before I had a chance to – just before we flew, I mean, we escaped. They spoke to me once. Maybe the would again.”

“And what do you hope they’d tell you?” She doesn’t know why she’s going along with this instead of trying to break to him that maybe he just imagined it and that escaping Ramsay Snow wasn’t anything a god might have orchestrated, but if it makes him feel better to think it was the gods, who is she to try and convince him of the contrary? It’s not as if it makes much of a difference.

“I have no hopes of that kind,” he says, and doesn’t go on.

_You could talk to me. Or to Jeyne. Or to – to anyone else who’d listen to you, and some people here would, instead of looking for that in trees_ , she doesn’t say, again, and gods but she really doesn’t know what she should do or say or how she should act, and she can’t believe it took her all this time to at least find out why he couldn’t stop going to whichever godswood was closest to them at any point.

_I failed you all along, didn’t I_ , she doesn’t ask as she grips his shoulder maybe a bit more strongly than before. It’s as if there’s something about him she can’t quite understand that she feels she never will, and she hates that she can’t because _he’s her brother_ , but he might be miles from her right now.

She opens her mouth, not even knowing what will come out of it but she has to say something or the silence will be too heavy to bear soon, and –

“Do you remember that time I went looking for you near the gatehouse?”

\--

_The bad news is that it’s still pouring down rain and that there is no way they’ll get back to the castle without anyone noticing. By now it has to be past supper time and everyone will have noticed their absence, but she doubts anyone is going to come down here to help them climb out, not when the sky is almost completely black and they’re sitting on the only part of the shore that’s not covered in crashing waves at this point._

_The good news is that at least Theon isn’t freezing anymore and that he doesn’t seem_ that _upset at their current situation._

_“I don’t think we can leave for a while,” she says, figuring she should break it to him that they’re not moving for the foreseeable future._

_He shrugs minutely and leans back just enough to look at her in the face again, swallows visibly and then glances down, not quite meeting her eyes._

_“It’s fine,” he finally says, staring at the small kraken embroidered on her shirt._

_“Aren’t you… I don’t know, you should be hungry,” she says awkwardly. It hadn’t occurred to her that he would be until she had realized that she hasn’t eaten anything since lunch, and he hasn’t since morning probably._

_He shrugs again. “I am, but – I was before, too.” She can hear the unsaid_ I haven’t eaten a thing since breaking my fast so it doesn’t really change anything, _and she wishes she had thought of it before. Maybe she could have brought something from the kitchens. She would have, if Rodrik and Maron had told her how long exactly he had been out there._

_“Well,” she croaks, “maybe we can go to the kitchens after we’re back. Even if we can’t climb out they’ll send someone when it stops raining, someone must have noticed by now.”_

_“I can wait. It’s not too bad,” he says, still looking downwards._

_“Theon, we can’t move from under here or we’d drown, it’s cold and you’ve been down here far longer than me, how it’s not so bad?”_

_He moves his eyes to the pile of shells now resting next to her side. “I was alone before. You’re here now.” He says it so low it’s barely audible and he’s_ definitely _not looking at her, and for a moment Asha feels like the sand has just shifted and opened a hole under the two of them, because she really hasn’t done anything much other than coming to get him, and she didn’t even want to in the first place, and instead he’s sounding so earnest, as if her coming down is entirely enough to make up for this entire bloody mess, and –_

_“Why, you’re not bad company either,” she ends up saying without even thinking about it, and even if he doesn’t look back at her she can see him smiling as he keeps his eyes on the pile of shells._

_After all, maybe he’s right. It could be a lot worse, couldn’t it?_

\--

He goes tense for a long, long moment before turning his head to look at her, craning his neck.

“Do you mean – when I was looking for those stupid shells and Rodrik and Maron left me there?”

“I mean _that_ time, yes. And you were _five_ , I guess it wasn’t – well, stupid. For you, anyway.”

He exhales. “I hadn’t thought about it in years. I hadn’t thought about it until you mentioned it just now,” he finally blurts out.

“I hadn’t either,” she admits, and slowly makes her way downwards, dropping on the ground next to him. “I don’t even know why I was thinking about it before. But – no, actually, maybe I do. Listen, it’s just – what do you remember about it?”

He shrugs again. “I just remember that I felt bad because you were – wasting time, I guess.”

She tries not to let it show that she was hoping he’d remember it differently.

“Wasting time, how?”

“You probably weren’t too happy about losing sword lessons to go and get me over there, and we ended up stuck there until when, the next day?”

_Was it that obvious_?

“Yes,” she confirms. “And fine, you’re not completely wrong, but – I think you’re missing something. And it’s not even your fault, for that matter.”

“Sorry?”

She puts a hand on his bony shoulder again as lightening flashes outside the window again. It’s raining openly now.

“That’s all true, but – that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to be there.”

“ _What_?”

“I could have just told a guard and sent them back in the day, and instead I went myself, didn’t I. And I could have done the same today. It’s – you shouldn’t assume that if you need someone to talk to that isn’t Jeyne you need to go out and find a magic tree to do it, if they’re even like that in the first place. Same as – maybe you shouldn’t have assumed that _I_ wouldn’t have brought you to that forsaken beach when we were five. Then again I never made it clear that you could ask, did I.”

“Asha –”

“ _Theon_. I should have done it years ago. Or maybe I should have been clearer about it when you came back the first time. I know it doesn’t mean much, with everything that went down in between, and if we all die because of the Others it will have been too little too late. But I’m telling you now. Even if I don’t understand what you do or why you want to do it, it doesn’t mean I don’t want any part in it. Understood?”

He doesn’t answer at once, not when he’s obviously fighting with a knot in his throat – the flashes of light coming from the window are making his hair look silver (back on that beach it still was black like ravens, as it should have been), and she can feel the three fingers he has on his left hand shaking openly as they brush against her wrist. The fact that it’s plain on his face that he didn’t expect it is probably what hurts most, and she’s not letting herself think about how he obviously was assuming that he’d be bothering her or something of the kind. He never would have _before_ , but she’s seen enough and Jeyne’s told her enough that she’s not surprised of it. Still, you can’t believe that kind of thing easily if you hadn’t nurtured that same thought deep down at least somewhat, can you?

“Yes,” he finally answers, his voice wound so tight that it sounds as he might crack open if he speaks out loud any further.

Asha doesn’t know if it’s more awkward now than it was then when she turns and tugs him closer, until she has her arms cradling his shoulders gingerly and the fingers of her right hand are slowly running through his hair, which at least isn’t as brittle as it was back when he told her that he had to know his name for the first time.

“Good,” she says, figuring that while she could move the two of them on the bed maybe it can wait a bit.

She lets out a breath she hadn’t known she had been holding when she feels his right hand grip weakly at the back of her shirt and his forehead touches her shoulder.

At this point she might as well tell the whole truth, shouldn’t she?

\--

_They stay there throughout the night – it stops raining just before sunrise, and at that point both of them had just fallen asleep. When Asha wakes up, Theon still has his arms in a grip around her neck and her stomach is almost cramping for how hungry she’s feeling. And she could definitely do with a cup of water or five. Still, the sun is out, it’s not raining, she can see the shore again and she’d rather try to get back home already than wait for someone to come – if she’s this tired she can’t imagine how Theon’s going to feel._

_She shakes him awake._

_“Come on, we can go,” she tells him after he rubs sleep from his eyes. He nods, grabs his shells and takes care to put them in every different pocket on his shirt that he can find so they don’t break – the only one he can’t put anywhere is the black shell. Asha shrugs and says she’ll keep it for now – it fits in the only pocket she has in her jacket, she might as well._

_Also, at least he’s not shivering openly anymore, which means that when she finds the easiest part to climb and she tells him to just hang to her neck as she goes up, he’s as still as it gets and he doesn’t move harshly. The rocks are still wet but not enough to hinder her climb – it takes her longer than it usually does, but by the time the sun has properly risen in the sky they have managed to finally reach the path to the castle. Gods, Asha hopes that there’s some food left from breakfast because she’s starving. Also they need to find the maester to look at Theon’s leg, the piece of cloth still tied over his knee is soaked in red even if she’s sure the bleeding stopped a long time ago._

_“Right,” she says, “we can go.” She reaches into her pocket and hands him the black shell, figuring that he’ll want it back._

_He shakes his head. “Oh, you – you can keep it. If you want it.” He’s biting down his lip, as if he’s just figured that while their mother might appreciate such a gift Asha wouldn’t know what to do with it._

_It’s – well, not untrue. She has no clue of what she should do with it, true, but it doesn’t mean she has to be mean about it._

_“Huh. Why, thank you,” she just says, and slips it back inside her pocket again. His cheeks flush slightly and when it’s obvious that he’s way too tired to go back he doesn’t protest when she picks him up again._

_This is definitely not what she thought she’d be doing with her morning yesterday, but overall? Maybe it’s not as bad as she’d have assumed, and she’s maybe smiling a tiny bit as she walks back towards the gatehouse._

\--

“You know,” she says, “I kept that shell.”

“Sorry?”

“The black one. You said I could have it, didn’t you?”

He leans back so that he can look at her, looking as if he’s desperately trying to remember what in the seven hells she’s talking about, and it takes him a good amount of time before his eyes go wide in understanding.

“Wait, _that_ – oh. I thought – I thought you’d just throw it away. I mean, it was –”

“Nothing I’d have grabbed for myself on a beach, but I still kept it. For a while, at least.”

“Why, what happened later?”

“After the rebellion – I told you, Mother wasn’t doing too well and she isn’t now. I still had it in my room. I thought I’d give it to her figuring she might – be happier for it. Or something of the kind. It – well, it didn’t exactly work. She put it with the others you gave her and cried for the next three hours looking at that box.”

“ _She_ kept them?”

“Of course she did, could be that she brought them on Harlaw if she were – well, if she were aware enough when she left. Anyway, I just thought you should know.”

He visibly swallows again, and something in the way he looks at her goes – soft, she figures, in a way that reminds her painfully of their mother all over again. She shakes her head and stands up, pulling him with her – he goes along without protesting, and he says nothing about _having to sleep on the ground_ as he usually does when she arranges the two of them across the bed so that he’s in between her and one of the walls – the bed is right at a corner. She sits up against it and he follows, his head slowly moving downward until he has it against her shoulder.

“Well, I guess that day at the beach wasn’t a complete waste of your time,” he croaks out.

“No,” she agrees, her own falling on top of his, “no it wasn’t.”

She can see him smiling ever so slightly from the corner of her eye and she decides that maybe today wasn’t either. Not at all.

End.


End file.
